


Large and in Charge

by skaralding



Category: Original Work
Genre: Awkwardness, F/M, Intense, Mildly Dubious Consent, Near Future, Rape Fantasy, Rape Roleplay, Shameless Smut, Size Difference, Stalkery Fixation, Sweet/Hot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-07
Updated: 2020-06-06
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:33:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 14,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24579874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skaralding/pseuds/skaralding
Summary: “I like you,” he says, against her half-open mouth. “I’ll rape you any time you want.”
Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Male Character
Comments: 11
Kudos: 49





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is something I've been sitting on for a while because dumb unspoken reasons. Originally posted on [on meme](https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/423315.html?thread=2511050387#cmt2511050387), it has now been repackaged into one tidy little fic. Mix one part rapekink, one part hastily filed-off serials and another part inspiration from _Crazy Rich Asians_. Sprinkle with dubious sci-fi, add a dash of the vaguest possible college setting, stir, and voila~~

It’s almost the dullest party Noah Cheng has ever been to. Almost. Because amongst the garbled cheers and chants and the drunken, out-of-time swaying and writhing to the same fucking songs he hears at every other party, amongst all this, he’s aware of Owens.

Standing, smiling, smiling only a little, in that way that makes you aware she’s only doing you a favour, only really smiling to be polite. ‘Stuck-up’ is a label that some sorts desperately want to apply to her; it’s hard to do it since she really does smile kindly at people regularly, people who aren’t slurring out an “oi, Owens!” or a “look over here, lovely!” Which Lucien Devigne, drunk as a skunk, has done to her and perhaps twenty other girls at this party several times already.

Noah is not sure why Lucien is here at all. Perhaps it means he and Karolina Bailey are on the outs, since Karolina only bothers with exclusive and/or private clubs where even the gorgeous aren’t allowed in unless they’re a friend of an influential friend. It’s no surprise Karolina isn’t here at Parrish’s monthly bash; it is most definitely neither exclusive nor private, since this massive house is probably the Parrishs’ only house, and thus inferior.

“Owens!!” Parrish shouts, some way away, crashing his way through the lurching crowd. “Why aren’t you dancing? Haven’t seen you dance at all.”

 _Because she doesn’t like it,_ Noah thinks, tensing inside, though he really, really, _really_ should be over this, this mess of useless, churning envy he feels at watching Tom Parrish chat up Maia Owens for the millionth time, especially since it nearly always ends the same way.

Most other girls would be, or would be seen to be, just a little flattered, alright, _massively_ flattered, to be singled out by the tall, sleek, and artfully messy-haired Parrish, especially when he’s looking down at them like that, smiling, getting in just close enough that it’s obvious he wants to be closer. But Owens is, and has always seemed, curiously immune.

In answer to Parrish’s ever so slightly desperate question about her not dancing, she simply shrugs. It’s not flirtatious, she shrugs the same way in a lab coat or her slightly ratty favourite jumper or a neatly buttoned shirt and blazer; it shouldn’t make Noah so aware of her tits, of the way she fills out the front of her fitted top. Which is almost way too prissy for a proper party, being a plain, solid blue that flatters her brown skin, and is also very sadly high-necked and long-sleeved. The outfit only works because she’s in sheer black tights and a really short skirt, a skirt so tiny that he didn’t think it _could_ be Owens, when he scanned the room and admired the legs and then looked up and saw the familiar, jewel-red fall of hair screening the face of the wearer.

“Not dancing, then?” Parrish says. “Alright, alright, let’s at least get you something to drink, and—”

“I have one,” she says, waving at him with the cider she’s been nursing for oh, at least an hour. It’s felt like an hour, certainly, since Noah saw her, whited out, then noticed she was drinking, and _then_ formed an incoherent, pleasant dream of wandering up with another (sealed) drink at just the right time, saying something witty and laconic, which would mean his somehow ending up in the bushes outside, somewhere in Parrish’s massive garden, his cock hilted deep inside Owens’ tight, wet cunt.

“I’m all right,” she says to Parrish, perhaps a little louder than normal, her indulgent, almost patronizing tone snapping Noah out of that stupid daydream. “I’m really, you know, I quite like just hanging about, swilling, watching everyone go mad. It’s relaxing.”

Parrish clearly doesn’t seem to agree. “But, you know, you could—” The music blares, hoarse screams and rough bass Noah can almost feel against his skin, and he loses a bit of whatever nonsense Parrish was trying to sell. “—or, you could, you might come outside? With me?”

Owens looks at him. Looks away for a moment, while Parrish sweats, and then takes a long, pointed swig of her drink. “I’m all right,” she says, and that’s a closer, that is definitely the end of the line. “Really should be finding Jess, she was saying she wanted to talk, something about the end-of-term stuff, our project and that.”

“I could…” Parrish starts to offer, just as the music blares once again, and all that last gasp ends in is Owens smiling, shaking her head, and then striking out away from him, moving to the edge of the heaving room and squirming her way past the other bystanders, wallflowers and coiled-up couples both. Noah watches her, and soon finds himself moving, angling off into the crowd in the same direction, even though he hardly knows if he’s really going to try to do anything.

Even though he knows, he really does know, that the extent of his and Owens’ relationship is based on the fact that he’s friends with Sebastian, and they are all occasionally paired or grouped together in Ancient History. Where the two of them—Seb and Owens—argue hotly about what century their project should focus on, or about what’s in this blog Seb read the other day, or something else, and Noah sighs and smiles and rolls his eyes and maybe exchanges a commiserating smile with Jessica, but otherwise doesn’t say much.

He’s never been one for saying much of anything to anyone, really, not since he figured out, or was taught, or shown, in primary school, that nearly everything he wants to say out loud is odd. Funny, funny to laugh at, funny strange, funny amusing, funny in the way you laugh at some sad strange animal dancing, because it really shouldn’t, but it _is_ dancing, how hilarious. It’s not like he doesn’t talk at all, or like he doesn’t know what he should be saying, he’s not completely unable to grasp _that_ , it’s just that there’s often something weird that jumps in there if he’s not being careful.

He is going to be careful with Owens. He really almost has to, if he wants to go from “oh, Seb’s mate” to “oh, he’s alright, really easygoing” or whatever nice facade works well enough when he strikes up a conversation with her. He particularly doesn’t want the things he thinks about her, about her soft, wide mouth, about the way the sun limns her brown skin, about the way she hunches over, sometimes, about the way she plays with a lock of her hair when she’s not thinking of anything serious, or about the way he fixates on her crashing breaths of exertion when she’s come in late for a lecture, he specifically does not want any of that coming out, becoming apparent to her.

He just wants to talk to her a little bit more than usual. _Just that,_ he tells himself as he follows her, all the way across the house, through the other living room, into the main dining room, where Jessica Winters is sitting and giggling as Alice Ridley tickles her sides.

They’re not the only ones there; this dining room, being just off the hall, and therefore near the main staircase that sweeps up to the second floor, has become a sort of antechamber for nervous, flirting couples, who’re smoking or snorting something and maybe kissing a bit, before getting up to move things to a much more serious location. There’s also a projector set up, showing what looks like a Batman film or a superhero thing of some sort, but only one or two people are really watching it.

“No need to stop on my account,” Owens says, wryly, once she’s ducked her way under the projector’s beam and eased onto the bench beside her friend. Yes, the massive, long dining table in what really seems to be the Parrishs’ main dining room is flanked by equally long, solid benches on either side. Noah has never understood that. “Don’t suppose you two want to leave early.”

“I can,” is Jessica’s first, heroic answer, even as she tries to wriggle away from Ridley’s quite obviously roaming hands. “I mean, I’m not—I could still drive you, it’s not too far…”

“Get Parrish to do it,” Ridley says, slyly, and Owens rolls her eyes, and Noah would kill… something, something small, to be able to see more of her expression, to see if she’s embarrassed in a telling way. But the room is dark, if perhaps not as dark as would be appropriate for the film everyone’s ignoring. He can only see her roll her eyes. “Really, though, we weren’t planning on staying much longer.”

“Not high enough yet?” Owens says, snidely, and then ducks a half-hearted smack from Ridley. “Alright, I’ll do something with myself. But you two bloody well owe me.”

As she heads back toward the door, ducking beneath the projector’s beam once again, Ridley chuckles, murmuring something to Jessica, then calls out, “shag someone!” To which Owens doesn’t even react. She just keeps on walking toward Noah, toward the open door, really, and somehow all his ability to pretend he is not, and has not been looking at her, has suddenly deserted him.

“Hi,” she says, as she turns sideways to squeeze past him. “Is there something…?”

No, there isn’t something, the idea he’s having is uniquely terrible, but it doesn’t stop him from opening his mouth and saying, “I could drive you, if you like.”

And then, as she stops in the doorway, or more correctly, half in and half out of it, opposite him, so near that he has to look in her eyes because otherwise he’ll see right down her top, though, on second thought it’s quite high cut so he mightn’t really, he finds himself adding, “I was about to leave, myself.”

“Really?” Owens says, blinking up at him, and he feels so, so stupid, so uncharitable for thinking that Parrish was pathetic for being so markedly awkward around her, because, faced with her slightly widened brown eyes and glossy, parted lips, Noah really can’t think too well either. He’s unsure, for example, if that was a sarcastic ‘really’ or a real one, the kind you said because you wanted to be talked into accepting. “You wouldn’t, um, I didn’t think you had a car.”

“It’s my cousin’s,” Noah says, because at least that is normal, it is a normal thing people say. He can say it and not let on that he’s thinking he could probably pick up Owens with one hand if he strained at it, and that he could very certainly hold her down, and keep her down, with one. “I usually drive them up, and it’s hours from now or it’s tomorrow by the time they want to go.”

“Still…”

“You’re staying with Jessica, aren’t you? In town?”

“You don’t have to get me all the way, I’m sure, I mean, I think the buses are still running.”

“It’s no problem,” Noah says, shrugging, dancing inside, because she’s slowly, hesitantly following every step he takes as he backs out of the doorway. “Really.”

They don’t speak much on the way to the car. Owens, once assured that it’s really no trouble to drive her home, gets a brisk attitude about the whole thing; she says a really quite pleasant goodbye to the slightly scowling Parrish, citing headache and an essay due Monday. She picks up her coat and shrugs into it and it’s all Noah can do not to watch suspiciously, it’s so hard, he’s half hard and her tits are magnificent in that top, jutting out as she wriggles her arms into her sleeves.

She’s frowning a bit by then, but he doesn’t worry that he’s been caught, because it’s easily explained by their having just walked out the front door into the biting wind of the night. “Christ,” she mutters, as they start off down the stupid, dramatically swooping curve of the driveway. “Is it, is your car a ways off?”

“Near the entrance,” Noah says, and they subside into what he hopes is a comfortable, if rather huffy, shivering silence. Which he has to break. “Do you really have an essay due?”

“No,” Owens says, immediately, which is expected. The sideways glance she gives him, on the other hand… he’s not sure how to interpret it. “Why?”

Urgh. What the fuck to say. ‘Ha ha, you really can’t stand Parrish, can you?’ Or, even worse: ‘Oh, I see, okay. Nasty weather, this.’ Fucking urgh. “I’m not—it’s only, I dunno, I like the way you handle him.” Which is probably the worse option, and makes Noah sound incoherent, as well as, ‘handling him’ sounded way too sexual, just embarrassingly sexual.

“Excuse me?” She doesn’t _look_ angry. Surprised, yes; angry, well, he knows what Owens looks like when she’s angry, her eyes narrow a bit, and she gets this hard, deceptive smile up, but at any rate that’s not quite what she’s doing right now. “What do you mean, ‘the way I handle him’?”

“Parrish,” Noah says, by way of an answer, “has been on you all year, so—I mean, that’s not the point, the point is, or it should’ve been, I was sort of going for er, I was thinking you’d say ‘no’ and I’d make a joke, and we’d laugh. Possibly.”

“At Parrish?”

“Yeah, sure, that. Or at me, I’m an option.” Argh. It is lucky this part of the driveway isn’t well lit, Noah can feel himself flushing enough that she’d surely see it, or sniff it out somehow. He doesn’t blush, really, not noticeably, but he does get darker in the face, and he doesn’t, he just can’t look at her. “Oh, here’s, well we’re almost at the car, it’s the red one.”

“Is it,” Owens says, in a tone that forces him to look at her, because he doesn’t think she meant to sound teasing, and, looking at her, he almost can’t tell that she _did_ mean to, except for the wry, sideways glance she is quite clearly directing up at him. “I’m awful, I’m sorry.”

She doesn’t _sound_ sorry. “It’s okay,” Noah says, really almost properly, fully hard now, half from the way, or perhaps just the mere fact that Owens is looking at him, with the other half being that she is about to get in his car. His cousin’s car, technically, but at this moment, it most definitely feels like it is Noah’s. “I know I get a bit…”

“I know,” Owens says, her tone brimming with something, with the smile she’s trying to hold back. “I really shouldn’t tease, though.”

“It’s okay,” Noah says, now digging in his pockets, hoping against hope that he has the key. Just how embarrassing will it be to have to walk back up to the house, and then sort through the raucous crowd in search of either Will or Lucien… “Right, found it. Warmth ahead.”

The stupid, gloriously finicky passenger door sticks enough that he has to come around to her side to wrench it open. Noah feels entirely transparent leaning in behind her, reaching around her to wrest the door open, but he’s too horny to care. He doesn’t hang about eyeing Owens’ legs as she gets in, though, because that’d be even more obvious, and anyway he’ll be able to ogle her knees and thighs while he drives her home, if he’s careful.

“You promised me warmth,” Owens says, sighing, when the car sternly tells them that they’ve only got enough juice to head to a charging station a half mile or so away in the wrong direction. “You awful liar.”

He’s getting used to the way she’s apparently decided to tease him tonight, to her wry gaze and her pointed lack of a smile, so all he does is swear and curse Lucien under his breath as the car trundles off down the driveway and out onto the main road, waiting for an annoyingly long moment as the navigation tries to find a way to merge into nonexistent traffic.

She crosses her legs. Her coat falls open over her moving thighs; she pulls it closed again, rubbing her hands over her exposed knees, her shoulders hunching forward as she shivers.

He wants…

“I think I might freeze to death before we get there,” Owens declares, though her teeth aren’t chattering, and she sounds thoroughly satisfied with the chance to complain further. “Shouldn’t you do something?”

“You wouldn’t like it,” Noah says, smiling, half serious. “Wouldn’t be much use, anyway; there’s far too much of you exposed. It’s no wonder you’re freezing.” From the look Owens gives him, that was not the right thing to say. “I meant…”

“You meant that my skirt’s too short.”

“I meant an area problem, it’s only that, well, my hands, versus your legs—because those tights don’t look warm at all—” _She’s glaring now, fuck. Readjust!_ “An area problem! I have warm hands!”

“And?” This is quite clearly a stony ‘and you’d put those warm hands _where_ , exactly?’ sort of ‘and’; it’s definitely not the slyly approving sort. Fuck.

“I wouldn’t have touched you,” Noah says, seriously, hoping it’s the sort of thing she’ll find reassuring to hear. It’s even true, considering their threadbare connection, their only so-so relationship. Fantasies of force are only fantasies. “I’m sorry.”

Silence. Possibly the apology was just a bit too heartfelt. Possibly she might think… “I’m not mocking you, Owens.”

“I know that,” she says, lowly, without looking at him, and then it’s more silence until the car beeps and begins to ease off into the narrow exit that will lead them to the garishly lit charging station. “I’m going—you don’t mind if I go in the shop? I won’t be long.”

“No problem,” Noah forces himself to say, and is soon watching Owens as she gets out of the car, her coat clutched tight around her, but still failing to cover her knees. It covers the skirt, though, and gives him an irresistible idea of how it might feel to watch her clamber in, and then, once the car was moving again, begin to unbutton her coat, revealing every inch of her generous brown thighs, darkened by her tights, shielded by nothing besides those tights, because she’d lost her head and ditched the skirt for some improbable reason.

Lingering over that useless fantasy doesn’t hurt as much as it sometimes does. After all, it’s improbable that he’s in this situation anyway, waiting for Owens. Sighing, Noah backs the car into one of the many empty slots, and gets scoured by the rising wind as he watches the stupid thing plug itself in, and then checks his account just to see if paying for Lucien’s charge again will make a troubling dent.

Lucien and Will, like most of Noah’s peers, were really quite infuriating about things like this. They’d pick up the tab at clubs and at restaurants, pointlessly and pointedly magnanimous, expecting him to sigh and smile in relief, but that was the only time they ever remembered that Noah had to watch his account. Lucien _never_ recharged, even when he was lending you the car, he spent a shitload on mobile top-ups and very occasionally pulled into a station. Will was better, if he wasn’t drunk, or busy horning on someone. Will, at least, would look a little chagrined when Noah asked about getting paid back, and Will never had to be asked twice to pay up.

At least this slightly painful charge bill is for a good cause. Even if Owens won’t speak to him for the rest of the trip, or is just clearly, coldly civil, the way she gets when idiots like Lucien try to drip all over her. And here she is again, walking briskly, her low heels clicking loudly on the pavement, her coat just open enough that he can see the way her tits bounce as she walks back over.

He only means to look at her out of the corner of his eye. Somehow, though, his gaze lingers—those _legs_ —and when he forces his eyes back up, she’s looking at him, and it’s obvious that she’s noticed. “Can you get the door again?”

He can. She’s carrying a bag of something—bottles? Surely she hadn’t gone in for some beers, when if she’d wanted to get drunk, she need only have stayed back at Parrish’s? Noah mulls this over as he goes around toward her, skirting the car, and his mulling things over is why he forgets himself and gets behind her again and reaches for the door handle, his body caging hers against the car the same way he’d done earlier.

Only now, instead of amused, or perhaps indifferent, Owens has gone all stiff. Alarmed. It turns him on, all the way back on, like the most awkward and infuriating lightning.

He grunts a bit as he opens the door. Not because… maybe a little because he is all the way hard again.

Owens, for her part, tries to keep a distance between them, and he allows it. Despite it quite strongly occurring to him that he needn’t allow it, needn’t necessarily allow her anything. She clambers into the car, a wary eye on him, and it isn’t until she’s settled the bag of bottles (they clink) in beside her feet that he realizes that he has watched her at it, unlike before.

“Thanks,” Owens says, pointedly, looking up at him, and he really doesn’t know why he nods, and leans in, not close, because the car is low slung and it would be ridiculous, but just, just enough.

And then he says, like an idiot: “Your skirt looks really, really nice.” And then, as Owens blinks up at him, her mouth opening to say god knows what: “It’s not like you can help how cold it is. Sometimes, sometimes you just want to wear something.”

“Like a really whorish skirt?” Thank god, she’s being tart, tart is good, tart is much better than cool and civil and forbidding.

“Like an excellently whorish skirt,” Noah says, taking a risk. That she doesn’t smile is alright; that wry look is back, she thinks he’s playing along, joking and apologizing all at once, which would be nice, _should_ be nice, except that it just isn’t enough. “Shall I go ahead and try and warm you up, while this thing finishes charging?”

“You can start by shutting the bloody door,” is her tart answer. And then, once he’s done that, and walked around and got in and shut his door too, she adds: “Really, Noah? An area problem?”

He wants to believe it’s her fault, for saying his name, as if the sound of it is always enough to excite him (embarrassing, that it sometimes is), but when Noah puts his hand on her knee, he _knows_ it’s his fault, his doing.

She freezes, so he doesn’t move, doesn’t rub his hand against her cold, thinly protected knee, though it is a monumental effort not to. “Shall I stop?”

“Um,” Owens says, her voice low. “I didn’t mean…”

“I know,” Noah says. This isn’t how his fantasies start; this is much too tame, really. He doesn’t know why it’s so hard to breathe, why it feels so close in the car now, it’s just her bloody _knee_.

“Then,” she begins to say, only to cut herself off with a gasp, because he squeezes her knee, he does it deliberately, just as a last favour to himself, a last thing to steal before she slaps him, or he gracefully pulls away. “Noah.”

“You can tell me to stop,” he says, squeezing again, his fingers spreading against her skin. He means he’ll stop, he means that, but when he finally forces himself to look her in the eye, it’s suddenly clear to him that she’s taken another, far more threatening meaning from what he said. “You can tell me to stop warming you.”

That, he knows why he said that, why he lowered his voice. He wants to see her blanch, he wants to steal that away too, before he stops, and he wants it so much that he’s almost angry when he sees her lower her head an inch, as if that will hide her wide-eyed reaction.

“All right,” Noah hears himself say. Now, he will stop. Now, he will take his hand from her. He does, too, for a moment; he watches her inhale shakily, avoiding his gaze. Then he strokes his hand up the inside of her upper left thigh, because he is an idiot and he wants to be hit, he wants to be hit by her, he actually, suddenly craves it.

Owens whimpers. She closes her thighs around his stroking hand. Her thighs are cold. Her skirt hem is even higher than he expected—the way she’s sitting, he tells himself, even as he switches his hand to her right thigh, forcing her to keep it still as he moves his other hand up higher, his fingers stroking the gusset of her tights, her knickers. He isn’t sure… She whimpers again, as he presses and rubs, trying to feel if he’s imagining that she’s wet, or if she really is wet. For him.

“Do you want this?” he hears himself ask. “Is that why you wore this tiny skirt?”

“No,” she breathes. “No, I— _please_!” And she sounds so panicked as he tries to get his hand in the top of her tights that he stops, that he takes his hands away, wishing that her thin, high plea hadn’t made him even harder. “Oh my god.”

“I’m sorry, I—”

“You were going to…” her voice is thin. Broken. “You _touched_ me.”

“I won’t, I won’t do it again, I’m not, it’s, once the car’s done charging, I’ll just drive, and…”

He’s not sure why he looks over at her, then, or how he can even stand to try, after what he’d just nearly done, but when he does, he sees that her eyes are closed, and her hand is between her legs, between, under the raised hem of that fucking skirt, and she’s shivering a little as she rubs herself.

“You,” Noah says. “What the fuck?”

Her eyes snap open, wide, guilty, definitely guilty. She pulls down the hem of her skirt, pulls her hand away from where it was. “I’m, I was just…”

“Frigging yourself.”

“No,” she says, looking right at him, her expression half terror, half strange, unfathomable excitement, and that’s enough. “No,” she says again, when he comes after her. She twists against the grip on her arm, pushing at him, fumbling for the door handle just a hair too slowly. The sound she makes when she hears the locks engage is low, wordless. Terrified. “Please, Noah, don’t.”

“You already like it,” he says, lowly. “Think I didn’t see that?”

“Noah, I’m high as a fucking kite, it doesn’t mean I _want it_!”

He reaches down between her shivering thighs, searching under the seat; finally he finds the right button to press, the one to lower the seat back. He’s breathing hard, so hard he can barely hear the telltale whine of the seat motor engaging. Owens surges up, trying to pull out of his tight grip on her arm, trying to keep him from getting on top of her, but it’s a lost battle from the start. She’s too much smaller, too weak to do much more than shove him back an inch.

“Spread your legs,” he tells her. “ _Spread them._ ” He doesn’t know why she does it, why she lies there limp as he shoves up her skirt as high as it will go and presses his hand against her cunny. It feels, maybe, slightly damp? It’s hard to tell, with her knickers and her tights in the way. But she closes her eyes and shivers and tenses against the slow, firm motion of his hand. “Tell me you want me to fuck you. Or… or not.”

At that, she opens her eyes and squints at him, her gaze teary but amused. “For fuck’s sake,” she mutters. “Yeah, alright, I do, I wore the skirt, etcetera.”

“Not for _you_ ,” she adds, snottily, when all he can do is stare at her. “You’re not the only one who likes a short skirt.”

“No,” Noah says, grudgingly. “Can I hit you?”

“No,” she says, considering. Clearly considering. Then, as he fidgets above her: “Get _on_ with it.”

It’s hard, very hard, not to give in to the urge to slap her. He imagines it for a moment—surreal, that he can, that he’s on top of her, that she’s looking up at him with slightly parted lips. He doesn’t have the slightest idea of how to—how to continue. The mood, that is.

Probably, what he should do is start talking again, saying something menacing about how much he’s going to enjoy making a liar of her. Showing her how much she wants his violations. Instead, Noah shrugs and tenses inwardly and goes for the top of her tights, tugging them down her unresisting body in quick, forceful yanks.

It takes Owens a while to process it; she stares up at him first, clearly a little shocked, then tries weakly to prevent him. “Don’t—”

“One more word,” he says, leaning in close, his hands tight around her struggling arms, “and I will hit you.”

“I—”

He puts his hand about her throat. Her pulse jumps, she flinches, and her breathing comes faster, just as fast as his again, now. “Ssh.”

She closes her eyes, sending tears trickling down her cheeks. _Christ,_ he thinks, and the next thing he knows, he is bending in to lick them, feeling her flinch again. Hearing her moan a little, in the back of her throat.

That… he aches to kiss her. He doesn’t know how to make it work, how to even try to do it properly, when the whole thing he’d just said was all about her keeping silent. If he lets her open that mouth, he doesn’t know that she’ll want to resist the urge to say something, just to get him to menace her again.

 _Later,_ he thinks. _I’ll have that mouth of yours later._

He pulls her tights almost all the way down, leaving them sagging around her calves, rucked up above her feet. He thinks of what she would look like bent over in the backseat, her legs trapped, her hair swinging, her head down as he fucks her, her head down because she was doing her best to pretend this wasn’t happening to her.

Her thighs… she’s still cold. Her skin is pebbled with gooseflesh; she tenses and whimpers as he brings his hand back up to her slightly damp knickers. Black. Sensible cotton. She is soft and warm and yielding beneath. Tight.

Perhaps not wet enough to take him, but he knows he probably needn’t care too much about it. If she doesn’t like it, she’ll certainly let him know. Though maybe if he fingers her, licks her…

The car’s system beeps at him again, cheery, distracting, suggesting he put in an address. “Well?” he says, pointedly. “I don’t know your address, Owens. Enter it.”

He does know Jessica’s address, and he knows she knows that. He just wants her to cower a little more, to beg him.

“ _Enter it._ ”

“If I let you touch me,” she whispers, her voice shaking, “will that be it? Will you just take me home?”

Well, _now_ he won’t. “I don’t see why not,” he says, impatiently. “Go on.” And fingers her roughly, watching her tense beneath him, distracted by two markedly different types of input.

“I’m sorry,” the car’s system says, “that address is not one that I recognize. Could you enter it again?”

“Tell you what,” Noah says, “while you sort that out, we’ll just drive a bit, shall we?”

“No,” is the panicked answer, followed by a really quite inadvisable attempt at escape. She doesn’t get the door open, she doesn’t even get at the locks; she’s crying in the backseat, him on top of her, a few moments later, while the car vibrates around them, detaching from the charger, peeling slowly out of the charging station.

He gets her tights all the way off. She tried to kick him, just a couple minutes ago; it seems quite sensible to get those low heels off her feet, before they can do any more damage. The coat follows, not because it’s in the way, but because it means he can grope her all he wants while he strips her out of it and tosses it back in front. Then it’s back inside her with three relentless fingers, while she squirms beneath him and screams against the palm of his other hand.

She gets wetter. Just enough that he feels no guilt, unbuttoning, ignoring her garbled, wordless pleas when she feels his cock against her bare inner thigh, when she feels how hard he is, how eager he is to take her.

He forces her back onto the seat, groping her soft tits through the thin material of her shirt, well able to feel the stiff peaks of her nipples through her filmy excuse for a bra. Then it’s: line it up. Thrust. She manages to close her thighs against him somehow—he left her too much freedom—but it’s easily solved, he just has to pry them apart while she sobs.

Thrust, and this time, it gets all the way in. He can’t help a low groan of satisfaction.

She’s crying. Sobbing her heart out, rather than screaming. “See?” he can’t help but say. “Told you you’d like it.”

He’d said no such thing. But that seems to do the trick anyway, getting her even tighter, getting her struggling. Still sobbing, of course. Still in his power.

“That’s it,” Noah says. “Squeeze my fucking cock.” When she opens her mouth to scream, he smothers the sound with a sloppy kiss, swallowing her moans, ignoring her feeble attempts to move away.

He does her slowly. In and out, half in and out, giving her just the tip before plunging in the whole length, again and again. He licks inside her stubborn mouth and pulls away, rubbing his hands over the swell of her tits, pinching her nipples, pushing up the hem of her shirt even as he goes on fucking slowly into her. He bats away her half-hearted attempt to stop him, pinches her even harder, and then pulls her shirt up enough to see that her bra is this grey, lacy thing, easy to push up, to push aside.

“Look at you,” he says, hoarsely. “You going to give me a bit about how hard these are,” and he pinches her nipples for emphasis, “and how it’s all because you’re cold?”

“Fuck off,” Owens says, tearily, squeezing her eyes shut.

“You’re wet enough that I slid right in,” he says, unable to help a stupid, greedy smile. “Don’t worry, Owens; your dirty secret’s safe with me.”

He doesn’t speak to her again; there’s just no need for it. He’d bend to suck her stiff, dark nipples if it mightn’t almost certainly mean needing to pull out of her sweet, clenching cunt, and he’d rather do anything but that. _After,_ he tells himself. Once he’s filled her up, he plans to pin her down and lick as much of her as he can manage.

The image, just the thought of coming inside her, of filling her tight little pussy with his come, that destabilizes him, he can’t think of much else. He has to do it. He thrusts harder and harder, horribly conscious that she hasn’t said anything about if he could finish inside her. That she’ll cringe, maybe, or cry out, if he does it.

Or, maybe—

Hm. He can’t do her body, he didn’t do the best job stripping bare anything but her legs. “Where do you want my come?”

“Please don’t, please—”

“I’m going to finish inside you. It’s your cunt, or your mouth. Fucking choose.”

Her body shakes with her sobs. “Please,” she finally says. “My mouth.”

He doesn’t care, in that moment, if she’s only making a similar calculation to him, choosing which option might make the least mess. It’s alright. She’s going to drain him off, one way or another. She doesn’t have a choice.

It doesn’t work well, her mouth, but that’s her fault. She chokes and coughs and sobs, swallowing feebly. He wants to do it again, all over again, but he can already feel that he probably won’t, that maybe he drank enough at the party that even coming like that was a fucking miracle.

“Christ,” is all she says, when he finally pulls off. “Christ.”

She’s sweaty and shaking a bit, still. There are slight indents and marks on her hips—he held her down, at some point, but he hadn’t thought it’d be hard enough to leave this much evidence.

Speaking of evidence… There is a spatter of come on her chin, her lips, her cheek. Her hand moves, lazily, brushing and wiping those spatters away, or at least that was what he thinks she’s trying to do, till she starts licking her fingers.

“Like I said earlier,” Noah says, taking another risk, “excellently whorish.” The smug look she gives him is what finally lets him relax, secure in the thought that things are probably just about all right between them, even after how he just used her. “D’you want to do this again?”

The sound she makes as she sucks his come off her fingers—it’s not sexy, it shouldn’t be, she’s grimacing, actually, but it’s still hot enough that it makes his cock twitch. “Mm. Did you mean right now?”

“No,” Noah says, stupidly, because although they are in the traffic stream above the city, although they are alone and high above everything, far from witnesses or distractions, he has not really been thinking about the possibility of doing anything more _right now_. “I’ll do it, though. Right now.”

“Yeah?”

And that’s how he ends up with his face in her cunt for what feels like a solid, strange, thoroughly glorious half hour. At first, it’s just, well, she tells him what he’s doing wrong, or a little bit off, and he obeys with embarrassing alacrity, he tastes her and tastes her and he gets all shuddery inside as she loosens and quivers for him.

Then, well, they reposition a bit, so he’s not squashed as much, and her legs are over his shoulders, and suddenly they’re back again in the uncanny valley, and he’s forcing her again, holding her wide and helpless as he spears his tongue inside her. “No,” she says, breathing shallowly. “No, _don’t_ …” And he can’t stop _there_ , surely.

He thought he wouldn’t be able to get hard again. But this… her legs are bare for him, he sees his fading marks on her, he sees her tight, stiff nipples, and her teary, half-shut gaze, he sees the way she’s trembling, and it _hurts_ , he has to have more of it. More.

“You liked it,” he says, after a moment, plunging his fingers inside her. “You’re going to pay me back.”

He can spot the moment she realizes he’s not going to put his cock in her cunt. The moment she realizes he’s not climbing so far on top of her to slap her (he wants to) or force his mouth on hers (he wants that too). She screams.

“Come on,” he mutters, as he tries to smother that. As he tries to get the head of his cock into her mouth. “Come _on_.” He doesn’t want to have to choke her, it scares him that he’s thinking of it so eagerly, that he’s bloody well looking forward to it, he knows it’s easy to fuck up, he knows he could hurt her and somehow even that adds to the thrill. “Open your fucking mouth.”

“Please, Noah, please, I don’t want it, I’ll, please, please don’t do it, please…”

“Do it,” Noah says, his hand now tight about her throat, “or I will make you do it.”

There’s a trick to that, to saying things with certainty so that you don’t have to raise your voice, contort your expression or raise your hand at someone to make them understand the weight of your words. Noah, growing up the smallest boy in his set for some few, painfully annoying years, learned that the trick is to keep your voice very even, and have a certain look in your eyes. That, and, of course, the complete willingness to do as you are threatening to do, whatever it is.

Owens whimpers, and closes her eyes, and opens her mouth, and lets him put his fingers in, all of them at once, because he needs it, needs to see how widely she’ll stretch for him. She gurgles. Her tongue is so wet. Suddenly he wants to kiss her again, but he daren’t break off, he daren’t turn down the chance to have her mouth, and so he takes his fingers out and rocks forward, slowly.

She’s done this before. She knows what she’s doing, knows not to scrape him too much with her teeth, knows how to let him in deep. He tries to give her small, quick breaks. Noah keeps forgetting, keeps losing himself in the slow, slick thrusts into her warm, wet mouth, and it’s only when she begins to choke that he remembers he’s trying not to hurt her too much.

After one more withdrawal, one more moment of watching Owens tear up and cough and look up at him beseechingly, he can’t do it anymore. He shifts off her and bends down, presses his mouth to hers, kissing her savagely, glorying in the way she jerks back, the way she moans into his mouth as he runs his hands down her front, pinching her nipples.

Probably, it’s time, or should be time, for more threats, for more whispered, thrilling filth. Instead, Noah just pins her down against the seats and holds her there, shifting again on top of her, prying apart her trembling thighs. She’s so wet—it’s so easy, so fucking easy—

The sound Owens makes as his cock slides into her _again_ —for the second time tonight—Noah can think, but it’s in distorted flashes. He can’t help how roughly he’s pounding into her. She’s moving with him, though her eyes are tightly shut, as if… the way they might be, if this were real. If he were raping her, taking her sweet, wet cunt for the second time.

Christ, the way she’s gripping him—

“I’m going to come,” he says, though he’s not that close, he’s just, he knows this is mean spirited, but he’s been thinking of it since the first time, what it’d feel like. “I’m going to come in you.”

“No!” Owens’ voice is raw, wild, beautiful, beautifully hoarse. “No…” She’s pushing at him now, at his shoulders, weak, ineffectual shoves. “Noah, Noah don’t.”

She sobs that last bit. Nearly in his ear, too, it almost ruins the plan, almost makes him spurt into her ahead of schedule. “Come on,” he breathes, “you can’t seriously think I’m buying it. You sneaky little whore, you want it. Won’t get you pregnant, will it? Just make you that much wetter.”

She opens her eyes, staring up at him, her expression stricken. Gratified, Noah deliberately slows his thrusts, but he doesn’t moderate their power. This, he has always wanted this, to have her beneath him, spread, breathless from the way he’s slamming into her.

It’s tricky. Just as he judges himself to be just a little too close, just as he begins to start to pull out, Owens wraps her legs around him, sobbing, arching beneath him, and he can’t, of course he comes right then, shuddering on top of her, wave after wave sweeping through him. He tries—she’s still coming, still tensing and tight and slick around him—so he tries some few more thrusts, desperate to give her what she so obviously needs.

They don’t go still at quite the same time. She does, first, shivering. He feels her arms tighten around him, and then he stills too, lying dead atop her, his breaths still shuddering in and out. “Was that…?”

“You know how it bloody was,” she says, in a thin, almost angry tone that makes it sound like she’s desperately trying not to cry. “I’m—I’ve always been—I don’t know why I’m like this.”

Noah’s arm was already around her, so it’s easy to shift up a bit and stroke her hair, peeling back the few strands that have stuck to her sweaty face. “But you’re alright,” he says, half unsure whether he’s asking a question. “Right?”

Owens closes her eyes, briefly, and then opens them again, not quite glaring up at him. “Yeah, yeah, fine, get off.”

He’s not expecting it any more than she is, when he lifts his weight away from her, out of her, and then can’t resist coming back in for a quick, carefully gentle brush of his lips on hers. He feels her startled inward breath. Feels her arm tighten around him, encouragingly. The next kiss is more, well, it’s not chaste, but it’s not feverish either, like earlier. He loves the taste of her mouth: warm, salty, just that little bit like the cider she was nursing when he first saw her tonight.

“I like you,” he says, against her half-open mouth. “I’ll rape you any time you want.”

Owens draws in a quick, shocked breath, and then lets it out in a huff, pushing at his shoulder with the arm that’s not slung around him. “Promise?” she says, semi-seriously. “Because…”

“Promise,” he says, meaning it with every fibre of his body. Hoping his trick is conveying it well enough. “Absolutely, I promise.”

Owens huffs again, picking at something on his shirt collar, but from the way she looks up at him, she’s at least more than half convinced, which is good enough to be going on with. More than good enough.

Noah levers himself the rest of the way off of her, settling awkwardly on his side on the edge of the thankfully just-wide-enough backseat, and he’s positive that though she makes a small, grumbling noise at having to twist around a bit to kiss him again, she doesn’t mind it at all.


	2. Chapter 2

The next time Noah sees Owens, it’s weeks after the party, weeks before term starts, and she’s rather lightly dressed. Not in a sluttish way, since it’s sadly still really bloody cold, and they’re meeting outside on the cosy little high street a little ways off from Jessica Winters’ house.

It’s just not the sort of thing he’d ever have thought he’d see Owens wearing. Long sleeves, sensible high neck, jeans or pants or leggings, low boots, that was the sort of thing she wore, generally, at uni, often with the green-and-purple university scarf mixed in. This, well, she’s wearing her coat, and a thick cream scarf, but the coat is open, the scarf is loosely wound, and the thin, tight purple t-shirt she’s wearing underneath it is cut in a low vee in front. On her lower half, she’s wearing these sleek shorts that seem to end only an inch or two under the curve of her arse, leaving her lovely legs on display in sheer tights and calf-high boots.

Whiteout. Or it would be, if there weren’t a tall, hopeful-looking puppyish sort lounging around in the doorway of the coffee shop she’s in front of, and very obviously looking. Hoping.

No way Owens has failed to notice her puppy; watching her really isn’t safe, not like this, not when there’s no other girls or boys you could possibly be looking at. And her last message had very clearly said something about her planning to wait _inside_ the cafe, which she obviously isn’t doing, and looks just a little pinched about.

Which doesn’t go away when she spots Noah, who is bundled up perhaps a little more than usual, since the plan was to sit outside if they could, and he’d worried about how to make that work if she came tarted up the way he’s come to realize that she quite likes doing, for their little meetings. “Finally,” she calls out to him, and then she pulls her coat closed and walks over to meet him halfway, something that makes him slow, half in confusion, half because the sight of her walking so purposefully towards him does something to him. “Hi, sweetie.”

Wait just a minute. “Er,” is all Noah has the time to say, because Owens has stopped in front of him, and her annoyed gaze is completely at odds with the way she reaches up and hauls him down into a long, pointedly sloppy, thoroughly enthusiastic kiss.

_Sorry,_ he sees, in the corner of his personal HUD, after a few moments of pleasant confusion. _He lives on Jess’s street, won’t take either a fucking hint, or several._

“I’m sorry,” Noah murmurs, when she finally loosens her grip on his coat collar, allowing him to pull a little way back. “Couldn’t get away, till just now.” It’s pitched just loud enough to carry without being too obvious, and he thinks he’s selling Crazy Romance well enough, with the needless intensity he’s looking down at her. “Where do you want to go?”

He’s not sure if it’s what he said or the way he said it that makes her bite her lip, or makes her eyes narrow with held-in laughter. “Anywhere,” she says, passionately, and hauls him back in again, for the sort of kiss that usually follows that sort of ridiculous declaration, but feels a little awkward to do with no dramatic music going off in the background, and the acute awareness that they are definitely being watched. “The flat?”

Which is when Noah remembers that her being pressed up all the way against him is not just for show, and that they weren’t planning on only wasting their meeting today on coffee. “If that’s what you want,” he says, very seriously—still in character—after which she snuggles in elbow-in-elbow with him, complicating the business of turning around and heading back off down the street the way he came. “If you’re sure you don’t want to try another cafe.”

“Sod that,” Owens mutters, fussing with her scarf. “I swear to Christ it’s just not my day. We’d pick one, and we’d only end up finding bloody Parrish in there, with the entourage and everything.” A pause, then, as they shuffle together around the corner, and then stop for a brief moment, carefully disengaging. “Besides, you’re right next to that little supermarket, aren’t you? I don’t mind heating up my own hot chocolate, before.”

Sometimes, very rarely, Owens will linger afterwards, lolling about in the narrow bed that Noah uses at Will’s flat, and she’ll let him talk her into staying right there while he orders in. Mostly though, she wants her refreshment first if she’s having any, and she won’t even mention getting down to it until after they sit down and eat or drink in silence for a bit.

Then, there follows a simple pattern: she pays, or he does, or they split the bill, and then they walk together, closely, never holding hands, but still close. He’ll steer them to a taxi, or to his cousins’ car, or to a handy bus stop, and then they take the bus, or get dropped off, or—his favourite—get out of the car, their every sound magnified in the echoing emptiness of the underground parking garage.

Today is a car day, but it doesn’t feel at all like it did the last time, with her getting out into the cold, isolated, brightly lit, garage, and Noah following her. The way she kept glancing back at him over her shoulder, nervous, but excited. Thinking, very obviously, about what he had promised to do to her.

Today, though, the mood’s not right when they get into the car, since Owens is still quietly fuming about her puppy problem. Then, when they finally do pull into the garage beneath the right building, their plan to stop at the supermarket only makes things worse, eroding the usual quiet tension of their walk to the garage lift, because there’s only so excitedly tense a girl can get when you and her are trying to find the proper side exit, and then haphazardly making your way down the street in search of the supermarket you were positive would be a lot nearer by than it actually is.

By the time they find the supermarket, what tension there ever was has faded. Inside, surrounded by loud voices, packed shelving and bright lights, the last of the mystery dies, taking with it the odd feeling that has been dogging Noah ever since the first time the untouchable, unfazeable Maia Owens let him do everything he’s always wanted to do to her, and he saw—and felt—just how much she liked it.

It’s not that this, all of five meetings, roughly twice a week, it’s not that all of it has felt like some fantastical dream. Noah’s done too much undreamlike work; he’s been sitting through dinner at the Ayerleys’ and talking up Will’s increasing determination to go into accounting, and doing a lot more than his fare share of flat cleaning and other chores, just so that the times Owens comes over are that much more private, more special. Which they have been, if not quite in the way he was rather expecting.

Take this, for example, the sweet sight of Owens bending over in those shorts—not the full on sexy thing, the way a girl will bend from the waist, so that all your eyes want to do is settle on her arse. Owens doesn’t bother with the full bend; she half bends, half crouches, digging through the tins of cocoa near the bottom, clearly searching for her favourite brand.

In a dream, she’d do the full bend while looking sideways at him, then give in with a whimper when he lost control of himself and stepped forward to try and get his cock in past those lovely shorts. In a dream, no one in the supermarket would care to say anything to stop him. Out of that highly hypothetical dream, Noah waits for her. He is usually the one waiting for her.

Which he usually doesn’t mind. He minds, a bit, today, the fact that she’s mostly focused on getting the right kind of cocoa mix. He didn’t mind, though, when she made, a moment earlier, an offhand comment about how today’s not the day she tries making hot cocoa on the stove in Will’s kitchen. Implying, maybe, that this might be the first time they meet that she calls things off, or defers for another day.

“That’s fine,” was his response to her comment about the cocoa. And: “Anything you like.” Which he meant, somehow, even though it stung to do so. Now, as he watches her straighten up, the chosen tin having been tipped into the basket he’s carrying, Noah feels a little sick, a little strange somewhere inside. Tender in a way that hurts. The way she sheds her scarf doesn’t help; neither does the way she picks open her coat in deference to the slightly muggy heat in here.

Christ, but he loves looking at her. And now that that word’s been introduced, it’s time to disengage his brain, to think of anything else, anything remotely interesting, because after their second meeting, during which they’d fucked in the backseat of the car again rather than bothering to drive all the way to Will’s, Noah promised himself he wouldn’t be the one to ruin this. That he wouldn’t say anything to make her think he wasn’t going to hold up his end of their unspoken bargain to keep things casual.

“Anything else?” Owens says, turning slightly to look at him, and he shakes his head in lieu of an answer. “Ooh, wait, these too, for me. Sausage rolls?”

“Yes, thanks,” Noah says, trying not to feel anything much about it, hoping with all his might that she won’t notice how stupidly flattered he is that she remembered that he likes sausage rolls. “Are we splitting all this, or?”

“No,” Owens says, turning away with a deliberate flourish. “ _You_ made me wait,” she adds, with an insolent, backward look at him, “so it’s all on you.” And just like that, some of the tension is back.

It becomes increasingly obvious at the till, where she keeps sneaking glances at him while deftly scanning in everything and bagging it in one of those slightly papery plastic bags she always seems to be able to pull out of a coat pocket when needed. Noah hovers behind her, payment ready, half watching the total, but mostly watching her, enjoying the way she slips past him once the till beeps at him beseechingly.

There’s something in the way she waits, tapping one boot toe with the other, her hip pressed against the edge of the platform the till is bolted to. Something in the way she flips back her hair as she bends a little— _so_ on purpose—to fetch the laden bag and hold it out to him.

They don’t walk back to Will’s building hand in hand, but it’s almost better, the way she keeps shouldering into him, the way they get into a brief, impromptu race for the front entrance, the way she giggles as she narrowly avoids being slammed by him against the glass door. He thinks of the way it feels to be inside her as he enters the right code, as they hurry into the lobby, making for the lifts with quick, still needlessly competitive strides.

He’s not aware that he’s crowding her once they get inside the first lift that comes, not right away, at the very least; the lifts here are bizarrely tiny, for all that they sport mirrored walls and brushed steel rails in their interior. It’d be hard for a boy of Noah’s size not to loom a bit, especially while done up in the wool monstrosity he uses for a coat. He hears her breathing speed up, though, when he leans in over her to authorize the stupid wanky security bot to take them to the right floor, and that’s how he knows things are most certainly on again.

Or rather, that they _could_ be on again, because there’s always a moment when he lets Owens into the flat, where she goes a little quiet, looking at everything. _“Christ,”_ she said, the very first time he brought her here, and it’d been a solid half hour before he could get her to do more than clutch at her glass of water and ramble on about her next Geography essay. Being in his bedroom had helped; it was too obviously a hastily rearranged side room that had a bed awkwardly rammed in, no matter that the bed frame was real wood, and the carpet was ruinously thick, and the entire colour scheme faintly screamed that it had been Designed.

_I don’t know how you can bear to touch anything,_ she’d said, too, and had then very much enjoyed being tied spread-eagled to the supposedly untouchable wooden posts of his bed. Which isn’t necessarily what he wants, today, but is very, very nice to think of.

“Earth to Noah,” Owens says, pointedly, and then smirks as he stares at the mug she’s waving in his direction. “D’you not want anything, after all? Only, when I asked if you wanted some—”

He’s never done this before. Not like this, not out here in the kitchen, where anyone could come in or stroll out of a room and spot them, not even though he’s always bargained, deliberately, for the times when Will and his loud, nosy boyfriend specifically won’t be here. Noah’s first concern is that she doesn’t drop the mugs, and then, that she doesn’t hurt herself struggling, not too much.

Then, with the mugs on the counter (“put them down, _now_ ”), and her trembling body crushed against the cool metal of the fridge, it’s time to think of logistics. He wants, he really wants to fuck her here, but he doesn’t want to worry about perching against the counters, doesn’t feel up to the effort of bracing her up against a wall…

“Get this off,” he hisses at her, loosening his cruelly tight grip on her wrists as he starts to tug her coat off her shoulders. “Don’t you fucking—”

He knows she’ll try to wriggle away if he lets up; she always does. It’s still a charge when she does it, the way she sobs in her throat, the way she whimpers as she tries, straining within the tense circle of his arms, her boots skidding a little on the kitchen tile. Getting the coat sleeves down her arms is a risk, it ends in her clocking him one, screaming as she runs, shedding the coat when he tries to use it to hold her back… “For fuck’s sake!”

She’s hammering at the door already. She never screams at this point, just sobs, scrabbling uselessly at the door, not daring to look back, her whole body shaking. Noah, breathing harder and harder as he walks up behind her, cannot help but feel like this is the best idea he’s ever had. It’s so much better doing this out here, so much better knowing that she must have heard it when he flung aside her coat, and that she can hear him slowly approaching her, the way there’s no real room to do when they’re locked in his bedroom.

By the time he’s right behind her, she has gone almost still, her hands fisted against the unyielding wood of the door, a fine tremor running through her. The small sound she makes when he puts his hand around her throat is almost too much for him; he stops a moment, shaking against her, trying to remember why exactly he can’t just force her thighs apart and get at her right here, right now.

“Come on,” he finally says, his voice low and strange in his ears. “Be sensible. You know what I want, don’t you?”

Owens chokes back a sob, her throat moving beneath his grip. “I don’t want to,” she whispers. “I don’t want to, Noah, you can’t—”

She jerks in his grip when he plunges his free hand down into the waistband of her shorts, but there’s no way to stop him, nothing to stop him from getting his hands in beneath her tights and rubbing her directly, from fingering her through her filmy knickers. It shocks him, again, how wet this sort of thing makes her. She whines in her throat and struggles weakly against him, but she’s pinned, and she knows it, and her tightening cunt knows it too, knows what’s probably next, wants it.

Noah takes his time.

They end up, finally, in his room, but not until after he’s bent her over the couch and pulled down those shorts, and gotten all the way into her tight, clenching cunt. She screams then, once, as he forces his way in, and then just sobs. After that, it’s time to drag her to his room, stripping her as they go, until she’s stumbling against the foot of his bed, clad only in a thin t-shirt, dripping inside, ready to be used.

Which he does, harder than he probably should, because she’s sobbing by then, in low, barely audible gasps that only make him want to hurt her more. Her orgasms wash over him in sweet waves, until he can’t really think, can only thrust, and thrust, and _thrust_.

She’s close again when he comes. It’s in the choked little cry she lets out as he shudders on top of her. It’s in the way she moves under him, weakly. Desperate. So he stays hilted deep inside her, and slides his hands down over her, squeezing her breasts, pinching her stiffened clit, rocking just a little way in and out of her, until she tenses all over, her face turned away from his, her eyes screwed shut.

Usually he can manage to sit on the frankly embarrassing urge to kiss her on the cheek by the time she’s gone mostly limp again. Today, though, today’s somehow harder than usual, he knows that the moment she opens her eyes again, she’ll see him staring down at her like an idiot. He knows that it’ll ruin things if it’s like this that he says that he loves her; she’ll most likely walk away thinking he means the gloriously filthy sex.

Noah doesn’t know why it feels so difficult to gin up the courage to say something serious to Owens. Even at the more appropriate times for it, he always ends up choking down the words while her hands are busy with her usual hot chocolate, and his are busy with coffee.

“I don’t even know that I much like coffee,” Noah mutters, and then flushes, because that makes Owens open her eyes and squint at him in that particularly indulgent way that he’d hate if it were coming from anyone else. “Sorry, I was, um…”

“Thinking,” she finishes for him, nodding slightly, her expression comically serious. She wriggles under him, and that makes him feel caught between the urge to shift off politely, and the urge to pin her down again. “About…?”

_I’d fuck you again if I could manage it,_ is what Noah thinks he’s going to say, in the deadly serious tone that seems to work best on her, because he thinks he wants to try lapping up his own come from her cunt again. Instead, though, he distinctly hears himself say: “You know, I do really, really like you.”

Owens, well, she stares up at him in a way that’s not at all flattering, and when next she squirms beneath him, it’s definitely not meant to be suggestive in any way.

No. No, this is tension, the real stuff, the kind he definitely cannot ignore. As he carefully pulls back from her, Owens pulls away too, very carefully. Very deliberately pulling down her rucked-up t-shirt, as she lets out a short, forceful breath. “We—”

“I’m—”

They both pause, Owens carefully, him wishing really really hard that he hadn’t said anything. Then he waves at her, hoping she’ll turn him down gently, though he knows her well enough to know she probably won’t, just from watching the way her face has gone calm and still.

Resolute. Resolute is the right word for it, when she clears her throat, forcing herself to face him. “I don’t believe you,” she says, as the first quick, painful hit. “Sorry.”

“Right.” Possibly, his tone was just a little too bitter, or blunt, because the calm, polite resolution in her expression seems to crack. “Look, I meant—”

“You mean you like fucking me, but not well enough that you’d ever risk letting me meet your cousin,” Owens snapped. “And certainly not enough to ever bother with my actual name.”

His mouth falls open mostly on its own accord. “I thought,” he forces out, “I thought you didn’t want me to.” But even as he says it, he’s no longer sure where or why he got that impression, especially because Owens—Maia has clamped her mouth shut, and is looking just a little embarrassed. “I can do it. I can call you, um.”

Saying it now would be way too weird, so they both sit there in this moment of awful, really quite nerve-wracking, mutually awkward silence.

“If you want,” Noah forces himself to add, carefully, “you can stop in tonight. Do dinner with me and Will. And, uh, probably his boyfriend, if they are here for dinner, and not off crawling pubs or whatever.”

“I don’t want to meet them,” Owens—Maia says, in a rush. “I mean, I probably should—”

“You don’t have to, if you’d rather not.”

“—but it’s more, I, um, we _are_ using their flat.”

Noah cannot help but smile.

“ _What?_ ”

He leans in slowly, knowing he’s pushing his luck, but unable to keep himself from trying it all the same. It’s weird; he’s quite sure he’s never kissed her like this, in slow, strange stages, their faces almost much too close together, his breaths tangled with hers, her mouth warm and wet and strangely unfamiliar against his.

“You never said what you were smiling about,” Maia says, a moment later, petulantly. Her brown gaze is narrowed, and she’s frowning just a bit. Worried. “ _Noah_ —”

“I like you,” he says, “really an awful lot.” Which makes her roll her eyes and shift restlessly in his arms, and then tuck her head in against his chest.

He supposes he should be worried that she’s never said the same thing to him, about her liking him. But, just now, Noah is too taken with the thought that Maia Owens worries what he thinks of her, even if it’s just a very tiny amount.

* * *

It doesn’t fix everything. Owens… Maia takes to snuggling against him, ducking into his arms nearly automatically, and she kisses him, now, before and after, always hesitant, always just a little shy. But the sex has got, well, the sex has been rather straightforward, ever since.

Nice, more than nice, more than really good, even, but it’s not…

It’s not what she likes. She’s never as wet anymore, starting out, though it kicks in after, and she averts her eyes and gets so bloody fucking tight he thinks she’ll pinch him off, and he knows, they both know what she’s really getting off to. What ideas are making her squirm beneath his slow, purposeful thrusts.

Finally, two weeks after they discovered they were both in a fair way to being fond of each other, Noah has had enough.

“Nice movie,” Alice says, after a two-hour train wreck of a film. “Shame about everything in it.”

“It was your choice,” Maia says, with a little smile, and then Alice hangs her head and groans, and Jessica laughs, and Noah puts on a careful smile so as not to be left out, and listens and nods as Alice curses everyone involved in making and marketing the whole enterprise to her, down to the useless fuck that somehow managed to con her favourite review blog into adding it as an okay option for a night out with friends.

“I am going to hunt them all down,” she says, unsteadily, as they walk outside, “murder all their, their wives, their husbands, their kids, their mothers…”

“We could get a refund?” Jessica says, semi-seriously, only to be shot down by Maia and Alice both.

“What we should do,” Maia says, “what we _really_ should do, is get Seb in to see it. With, er, whatshername.”

“Ohhhh,” Jessica says. “That’d be low.”

“He deserves it,” Alice says, easily. “We have to bloody find out from, from _Georgie_ that he’s seeing someone. _Georgie._ ”

“We tell him to bring her,” Jessica says, getting into it. “Triple date?”

“Get Ryou in, too,” Maia says, turning around to face them all, walking backwards in small, careless steps. “With, um. Gary?”

“Oh, fuck knows who it is by now,” Alice says. “It’s summer. You know how it is in summer, he’s with, you know, Parrish and that lot, they’re dragging him everywhere—”

“—and they’re meeting his old flames,” Jessica says, grinning, “and the boyfriend’s starting to think, well, this is a bit, you know, a _little_ bit much—”

“But he really likes Gary, doesn’t he?” Noah says, to be companionable, only to be roundly laughed at.

“That’s,” Alice gasps, “oh, fuck me, that’s always it, isn’t it? He likes them. He really likes, he likes all twenty of ’em, he really does.”

“Oh, Alice,” Maia says, wickedly. “It’s really more, I dunno, it’s fifteen, I wouldn’t say _twenty_.”

“Twenty-one,” Jessica mutters, blinking, her gaze fixed on a faraway point, like most people’s gazes do when they’re reading something in their HUD. “Apparently, Gary’s er, he’s just, er, signed off. According to Georgie.”

“ _What?_ ” Alice cries, and all three girls stumble to a halt, blinking, half muttering indecipherable words as they all simultaneously try to hook into the gossip board or message room Georgiana Ivanovic and perhaps half their year is likely currently hanging out in. “Oh my god, you were serious.”

“Well…” Maia says, drawing out the word. “Suppose now that it’s just going to be us, and Seb and, er, Millie.”

“Oh, but that’s not—we could still have Ryou,” Jessica murmurs. “Surely he’d, you know how he is, he’d want _something_ to do, he’s not the hidey-hole type.”

“Fuck no,” Alice says. “Mark my words, if we had him, and Seb and her, it’d end, the summer would end in Seb trying to kill him, because Millie had gone off with him.”

“Or the other way round,” Maia mutters. Then flashes an evil grin in Jessica’s direction. “Or, well, you know, Ryou could take Jess.”

“He wouldn’t,” Alice says, distractedly, still neck deep in whatever chat she’s surfing, while Jessica makes a horrible face at the still-grinning Maia, and Noah tries to tell himself it’s better if he just waits for Maia and her friends to run this down, to finish being excited at each other. Or that asking to be off will only make him fail whatever kind of test this obviously is, the test of who’s an impatient fucking bastard who’s been thinking all night, on and off, but still all night, about how to put his cock in their best friend.

Somehow, he manages to hang in there with noncommittal murmurs and careful nods for the next fifteen minutes. Then, when Maia starts to shiver even through the extra coat he’s draped around her, he suggests (like the coward he is) taking the conversation inside somewhere, a cafe maybe, only to run right aground on Jessica and Alice’s polite, apologetic protestations.

Neither of them say he should have said something sooner, but he gets the distinct idea that probably he really should have. Not in an annoying way, necessarily, more like the feeling you get around companionable, talkative people prone to assuming not just that everyone there will speak up if there’s a problem, and who are also the sort of people that actually _will_ do the decent thing when some shy someone speaks up.

“Kisses!” Alice calls out, but really only dispenses quick presses of her cheek against Maia’s, and then, shockingly, against Noah’s as well. She’s got a stronger arm than he’d have reckoned, but that’s semi-serious hockey players for you. She also, as she slings her arm around Jessica and starts the walk off to her car, looks back a moment with a serious expression, watching him chafe Maia’s ice-cold hands.

Not a warning, precisely. But it’s, well, she smiles a little when Maia looks up and waves, and smiles even more when Jessica turns to wave back, and when Noah, feeling silly, lifts a hand up to wave as well. “Next week, yeah?” she calls out. “You two have a nice, long drive, now—”

Maia gestures at her, smiling sweetly, the gesture nearly not something he’d ever have expected to go with _that_ smile. Alice shakes with laughter, buffeted further by an admonishing shove from Jessica, and then the two of them turn a corner, and it’s done.

“To Will’s next?” Maia says, looking up at him hopefully. “Though, well, it’s already been hours, with dinner, so maybe not?”

“We’ll drive around a bit, at least,” Noah says, cursing inwardly the fact that Will’s is two short, but highly annoying bus transfers from Jessica’s house, and so not the kind of journey Maia would jump at making early tomorrow morning to be back at the house for the phone-in to her parents. And, while he’s at it, he curses his father’s useless sense for investments, and curses Lucien for deciding he suddenly needs the car tonight about forty minutes from now, and never bothering to say boo about it until this fucking morning. “Come on, let’s get you warm again…”

Which Maia smiles at, and lowers her gaze a bit, while getting in on the passenger side, even though he’d not really meant to remind her of how things started, even though he really just meant—

Ah. Wait, wait, was that…

“You getting in?”

_Lucien, oh Lucien, you bloody trooper._ Of all the times for him to listen, to actually _listen_ to one of Noah’s pained rants about notice, about the seventy-plus times Noah has topped up for him without being paid back. Lucien has evidently begun to feel some sort of guilt, or perhaps realized that Noah could stick him with a near-empty tank out of spite, tonight, because he’s sent maybe a thousand extra credits to Noah’s account, not quite enough to cover all his bullshit charge bills, but enough. More than enough for Noah to put Maia in a decent taxi home, come tomorrow.

“Actually,” Noah says, as he shuts his door a little hard, out of excitement, “I’m afraid we’re going to have to go straight back a little early. Lucien, well…”

“Oh, for—”

“It’s alright,” Noah says. “It’s alright, it’s very nearly better, because he paid up. Like, not everything, but still.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, really. You could, um, if you like, you could stay over a bit. Get a bit to drink or something, before you go home by taxi. Tonight, or, you know. Tomorrow.”

“Um…”

“We won’t necessarily do anything,” Noah lies, because he knows _he’s_ going to probably do something. And because Maia’s giving him one of those furtive, guiltily excited looks from before their mutual confessions, before this was anything like a formal, acknowledged relationship. “Alright?”

“I suppose.”

Half an hour later, they’re locked in his room, in the dark, him having just firmly seen Lucien off, and Maia is sobbing as her mouth is forced onto Noah’s aching cock.

He could pretend that it’s happening because of the way Lucien looked at her, the way he eyed her and then eyed Noah, frowning a little in confusion. The way Lucien flirted, like he had any kind of hope getting more than a stiff smile from Maia, or like if he did, Karolina wouldn’t make him eat his own bloody balls.

Noah told Maia, oh, all sorts of things. _"I bet that’s who you really want,_ he’d said. _"I bet—no, wait, I know who it really is, I know what you like, remember? I know what you_ really _like."_

He’d felt—he didn’t know what precisely he felt, at the way Maia twitched in his unforgiving grip when he mentioned Alice. _“Strong, isn’t she?”_ he’d said, in a voice thick with ugly emotion, some of it suddenly, stupidly, painfully heartfelt. _“Pity she doesn’t have one of these.”_

No. Please, no. Maia had mouthed the words, shaking so badly he nearly couldn’t hear them, but she’d also opened her mouth and whined when he forced the head of his cock in.

He knows that whine by now.

He knows, also, deep down, why he hasn’t done things like this, like raping her ripe mouth, since the very first time they were together. He wants to hurt her, wants to hear her choke and sob for air, wants to twist her stiff nipples as hard as he can, to motivate her. It’s frightening, to him, that he can now think of little else.

Always, Noah has thought that letting off a little steam, or doing a little venting might blunt the part of him that wants, that craves this. It’s more than a bit frightening to realize that hurting Maia like this only makes him want it more.

“Oh,” she moans, around his cock, and tenses, her thighs pressing hard together, and that’s almost enough to do it, almost enough to make him coat the inside of her warm, wet mouth, so he holds still for a moment, his breath crashing in and out of him, and he wants…

He shoves Maia off him, shoves her off the bed entirely, laughing as she scrambles to try for the door. He grabs her hands, her hair, wrestling her close, dragging her to the floor with him. “Don’t tell me, you’re thinking of getting away, when you—” he can’t say anything for a moment, when his fingers spear inside her. “Fuck.”

She whimpers. “Don’t. _Please_ , I’ll—please, not there, Noah, please, I don’t…”

“But you’re so wet,” Noah hears himself say, and there’s something in it that makes her scream, really scream, and he can’t allow that. It’s too much. It’s just too much. “ _Shut. Up._ ”

A brief, breathless pause, broken first by Maia’s quick, terrified sobs. Then: “I’ll do anything else.”

“No, you won’t.”

“Noah, _Noah_ —” She screams again on the slide in, as if it’s killing her, killing her that he’s doing it. He doesn’t move much at first, irrationally afraid that he’ll slip out of her, she’s that fucking wet, and so he tells her, tells her what he’s doing as he hurriedly pulls out, his weight still pinning her, knowing he shouldn’t wipe off on her skirt, but aching to, using the sheet instead—“ _No!_ ”

“I’m only doing what you want,” he breathes, rubbing the newly dry head of his cock against her. “You don’t like being wet for it, eh? I did my best.”

She’s still wet. This way, though, he gets to hear her again, feel her surge up, frantic to get out from under him. Feel her fight him and fail all over again. Feel her moan and squeeze and sob beneath him as he slides in all over again. More friction. They both feel it.

Noah’s knees are aching. Doing this on the floor, it’s a terrible idea, but it’s good, it’s so fucking good. He’s there, he’s there already and he didn’t want—he wanted it to last, and last, and _last_.

Maia goes still as he arches into her. Shocked. “No,” she sobs, her voice broken. “You just… _no_ …”

He’s not soft yet. Short, brutal movements in and out remind her. She puts her hands against his thighs, pushing uselessly, sobbing still, and comes just like that, helpless on her knees before him, her cunt a sweet, painful vice, her moan of denial catching in her throat. Then, and only then, does Noah finally shift away from her.

He’s half expecting, from the shocked look he can barely see on her teary face, that she’s going to turn around and slap him. But she just half-kneels, half-lies there instead, shivering, even after he comes back in and pulls her into his arms.

“That was,” she says, some long moments later. “That was almost too much.”

Noah’s heart sinks. “Did I hurt you? Like, I mean really—”

“No, I’m a fucking liar,” Maia says, her voice low and strange. “You know that, I don’t know why you even…” She’s breathing hard, now, shivering in his arms. “Oh god. I. I want it again. I want it again.”

“It’s alright,” he says, because it’s all he can say, over and over. At least until he gets an idea, and adds: “I’m sick too, you know. Wanting it.”

“No, no, you’re just, I’ve asked you…”

“Didn’t ask me for that.”

“But I didn’t stop you, and, and you know I… you know how I want it.”

“Even so, Owens. Even so.”

“ _Fuck_ off,” she half laughs, half sobs, and they shake together, for a moment. “You know I was trying to be serious, you giant stupid berk.”

This is one thing he likes about the new order: that he can laugh a little more, and then twist a bit to press a long kiss to her cheek, and then hold still as she turns in his arms, turns and angles up and offers her mouth to him, her mouth that he almost came in. “I’m sorry,” he murmurs. “But. If you’re sick, for it, well then I’m sick too. So.”

“So.” She pulls back a bit, wiping carefully at her eyes. “Fine, we’re both fucking sick.”

“And we’ll keep taking our medicine,” he says, lowering his voice, letting his hands skim down her bare back. “Won’t we?”

“We can’t…” Maia breathes. “You won’t, you can’t _already_ …” But though she’s right, though he’s nowhere near hard enough to sort her out again, it doesn’t matter. They both know by now that he doesn’t need his cock to rape her the way she wants.


End file.
